You know that feeling?

Sometimes I leave the house in such a tizzy in the morning that I forget to turn off something, like the Chi. Or I forget to grab something, like my lunch. A number of times I've been saved from causing a house fire by a funny feeling I get in my gut while I'm walking to my car (sidenote: when I live in a house, my car will be safely tucked away in a garage). 

This morning there was a complete and total ID10T error. A SNAFU. A FUBAR.

I'm not sure what led the hubs to step from the front door into the kitchen but he did and there it was, the open refrigerator.  The open refrigerator that had been open so long that the light bulb had burnt out.

I'm going to have a class of milk now. Maybe scramble some eggs and throw some cheese on top.

When I live in a house

This morning I pulled up to my apartment complex and there was a dude, with green hair, smoking a cigarette, and shuffling to his 1985 power blue Oldsmobile Cutless looking like he had only recently stopped drinking. I look forward to when I live in a house and don't have consider the most strategic way to get out of my car, upstairs and in my front door all while avoiding eye-contact with weird friends of unknown neighbors.

Time keeps on tickin', tickin',tickin'

I have this sense that April will be here before I know it. In my head I was going to blog a couple of times last week, but I'm not even sure what I've been doing with myself, not a lot to show for this past week.  If someone did a productivity study they would find that I have managed to spend a lot of time hanging out at Woodcrest singing and dancing which, as far as church activities go, does not suck. But that will all end in a week and I predict that I will spend the rest of the month holed up at the local watering hole watching as much basketball as possible. Just like I did last year, and the year before that.

Just typing the words, I get all giddy about it. I will do brackets, that is right, mutiple brackets and I'll write about them because the what ifs, upsets, the drama and the glory suck me in like a new episode of Jersey Shore. Its unavoidable. I will shamelessly conduct daily appointments with basketball on in the background thanks to CBS Sports.  I will wholeheartedly root for any an all teams that play again Kansas. Now, I have to go prepare for Big 12 Championship tourney starting today. Mizzou v. Nebraska will require my full attention.

Sunny Disposition

I'll admit it. I have a Negative Nelly side of me. Although lots of good things happen in my life, I tend to cautiously celebrate while waiting for that one bad thing to happen. I only wait for it because time and experience have taught me that its going to happen but I also know that I can loose track of whats good by focusing on the bad.  One of the most useful skills I've acquired in my 30s is the ability to fake positivity long enough to trick my psyche.  

Take the weather in the middle of Missouri this week.  The weather gurus said it was going to be 50 and sunny by the end of the week. Since I have been particularly desperate for temperatures above freezing and  for enough sun that sunglasses were required, I initially got really excited about the prospect of that kind of forecast.  That excitement could have been short-lived because that's exactly when Nelly shows up reminding me that its Missouri, in the spring, and weather offers no guarantees. But this week, because I wanted sun SO badly, I told Nelly to bite me. I want to look forward to warmer days, especially a nice Friday. Each day has been increasingly sunnier and warmer than the day before and I let the excitement that comes when you wake up to sun pushing through the blinds in the morning overtake me. Although Nelly is still there, this time, positivity wins. 

Pictures of food

The City of San Diego runs commercials. Because of that, I'll spend the rest of the weekend thinking back to vacation, just when I thought I was moving on. Eating and SoCal are two of my favorite things so I dedicate this blog to comfort of what was.

The first morning at the beach house, the hubs and I had the place to ourselves and used the kitchen in our studio to make bacon (and eggs, toast, coffee and fresh blueberries and mangos). It was so good we didn't even really talk. Our only exchanges were passing comments on the brilliant view and weather and bacon from Trader Joe's.

My second favorite breakfast came to be by sheer fate.  I was out on yet another grocery store run and decided to drive down Pacific street just to see what else was in the neighborhood. 

I drove past this place which I can only describe as a food stand that happened to have rock star, unobstructed views of the Pacific Ocean. "The Bucc" was so amazingly good that I had the french toast, with a side of bacon twice that week.


My obsession with breakfast seems unending. My final mention of the meal includes Hill Street Donut House. These were so good that I was happy for the days when I traded in my daily dose of bacon for a plain glazed donut (or a cake donut with blueberry frosting as a substitute). Hill Street donuts were my last meal at the beach house. It was too sad to take a picture of the last anything that day.

Although breakfast is my favorite meal, I ate a lot of non breakfast related food too.  In a perfect world, someone would have handed me a In-n-Out single with cheese animal style, fries and chocolate shake the moment I stepped off the plane. 

I became a fan of the fish taco after my very first bite.  I have never savored a fish taco the way I did this one from George's at the Cove. Nor have I been offered the catch of the day for my taco. This was mahi mahi.

In all the times I've been through, in and around Dana Point, I've somehow missed Jon's Fish Market.  Which I totally blame my San Clemete friends for hiding from me. I was too busy eating to stop a take a photo but I thought about the crunch of the fish and chips basket from there for the rest of the week.  I wish I that could be my dinner tonight.  Instead, I'll bundle up under a blanket and eat a bowl of chili and listen to the rain fall.

I wasn't expecting that

For the first time in probably a decade (I do not like that I can account for time in decades), I decided to give up something for Lent. I'm used listening politely to what different people have chosen to give up for the Lenten season and then going on about my business.  For me, it has not seemed like something in which I needed to participate (kind of like watching the Olympics).  For reasons I still cannot explain, last night I felt strongly that I wanted to give up something. I had no idea what or why but I knew something had to go.  Honestly, I didn't want anything too hard. Coffee wasn't an option but things like chocolate or red meat seemed too easy because I have them so rarely.  I finally settled on the suggestion of a friend. Something that posed a personal challenge but not to the extent a week of detox was a requirement.

In the few hours that have passed this first day of Lent I have not had cravings for what I gave up but I have had an increased interest in the reason I've said no.  I'm excited about Lent 2010 because I come to it as a choice not an obligation. I'm looking forward to being a part of the conversation now and not only learning from others but having my own experiences to share.

Suprise!

Vacation was nothing I thought it would be and everything I wanted but didn't know it. Initially it was going to be a getaway for me and the hubs. We were going to go to a)Southern California, b) Colorado c) New Orleans.   He was going to buy the tickets and suprise me with the location. 

In a series of events that can only be summerized with "that just happened" we agreed to go on vacation with 2 other families. I'll say it, I expected chaos. I mean going on  vacation with 10 people including kids and that baby, sounded like crazytown.  The awesome part is that going on vacation with these people:

 

and these kids:

 

was definitely one of the best vacations I have ever had. The end result was a week of friends, fun and laughter that I'll never, ever forget...mostly because my friends took thousands of photos.  

Yes, I would absolutely take the "8 other people are coming with you" surprise vacation again.

I said I would eat a lot, and I did, more about that later.

*Photo credits in this blog to Laurie Creach.